The opposite of Resentment is Forgiveness and Forgiveness can be a path to freedom. The phrase “refusal to forgive” suggests that there is an invitation, perhaps even a constant invitation, to forgive.
Where is this invitation or calling coming from? Were it only coming from an individual who may not deserve forgiveness, that would not be enough to awaken and engage the heart chakra.
But if it is coming from the universe itself and from the Source of all things in the universe, then indeed it is enough to awaken a person to action and to love. And one must presume that that is the source of the call, since to learn to forgive is to learn a great lesson: A lesson about one’s own greatness and how the universe does forgive, and that is one way it gets on with its own tasks. Getting on with one’s tasks is one way to put issues behind us that are draining energy from our work and deeper selves including our vocation to compassion, the divine image in all of us.
Forgiveness is vast—there really is no rational reason for it. Justice by itself does not ask for forgiveness but for restitution. In order for forgiveness to happen there is required some great love, a love that beckons one to another horizon, another place, another relationship. Sometimes this call is clear and sometimes it lurks hiding in the dark, is muffled and requires faith even to catch a faint echo of its presence. Big love calls people to forgive bigly.
When one is stuck in a place of unforgiveness, one should go back to listening again to the invitations of the cosmos. Just as the cosmos is large enough to absorb our pain, so the cosmos is large enough to challenge us to forgiveness. Father Sky is that vast and invites us to be big as well. In the act of forgiving, the soul grows magnanimous.
Perhaps this is another application of Meister Eckhart’s teaching that “the soul grows by subtraction and not addition.” Forgiveness and letting go are a kind of subtraction after all. In a capitalist society, subtraction is rarely held up as something valuable. More is the name of the game.
Forgiveness happens. Forgiveness is possible. I once met a woman whose teenage son had been murdered in a drive-by killing in Los Angeles. They found and convicted the killer, who was about the same age as her son, and she visited him in prison frequently and gradually they became fast friends. It turns out that he grew up without a mother.
She told me that that friendship gave meaning to her son’s death. It also gives us meaning and hope: That the human heart is so big that it can move beyond hate and resentment to forgiveness. But it must make that choice.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, pp. 288-292.
See Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake, Natural Grace: dialogues on creation, darkness, and the soul in spirituality and science,pp. 98f.
See Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election.
See Fox, “Father Sky” in Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors To Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 3-18.
See Fox, The Return of Father Sky: A Cosmic Mystery for Kids of All Ages.
Banner image: The path to forgiveness. Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
How powerful a story is it for you to hear about this mother who not only forgave her son’s murderer but befriended him? What does that tell you of the depths and bigness of the human soul? Wouldn’t it be special to have presidential candidates who knew the lesson of how to cure resentment rather than demagoguing on resentment?
Recommended Reading
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
Natural Grace: Dialogues on Creation, Darkness, and the Soul in Spirituality and Science
by Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake
Natural Grace, a 208 page inspired dialogue between theologian Matthew Fox and scientist Rupert Sheldrake, unites wisdom and knowledge from unconventional angles. Considering themselves heretics in their own fields, Matthew and Rupert engage the conversation from postmodern and post-postmodern perspectives, deconstructing both religion and science—while setting the foundation for a new emerging worldview. Having outgrown the paradigms in which they were raised, both Fox and Sheldrake see it as part of their life missions to share the natural synthesis of spirituality and science rooted in a paradigm of evolutionary cosmology.
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God
The Return of Father Sky
The second book in the Father Fox’s Fantastical Fables series, The Return of Father Sky helps boys and girls to celebrate a new relationship with the masculine by way of Father Sky, whose return excites joy and wonder and possibility that enlarge the soul to welcome others and all creation. Written in a rhyming Dr. Seuss-like style, this full-color, beautifully illustrated book, written by world- renowned theologian Matthew Fox weaves together modern science and classic spirituality in a whimsical, entertaining format to illustrate important truths to readers aged 4 and up. With artwork curated from illustrators around the world, this book expresses the joy and wonder of all peoples and cultures, planting seeds of respect, cooperation and hope to work together for the healing of our planet.
3 thoughts on “From Resentment to Forgiveness: A Path to Freedom”
The use of a magnanimous anecdote about the Mother and her son was helpful to ground my own doubt of confronting such a magnanimous task as forgiveness.
“ When one is stuck in a place of unforgiveness, one should go back to listening again to the invitations of the cosmos.” I loved this line and resonate with it. Whenever the weight of unforgiving gets annoyingly burdensome, there seems always to be an inner cliffs-edge to sit and hear the echoes of the beckonings of the cosmos/self. And sharp of you to mention it as a challenge, because in those beckonings is something of the same nature as the siren song, instinctively drawing us in like an electric current. What’s so challenging is that the way requires a task-our task- and some interpersonal relationship mending. Now that I’m getting more in to the work of Adler, relative to Freud, I see how we struggle frame our issues as truly based on interpersonal relations, in contrast to some objective error or dysfunction of the individual in brain, body, mind, etc.
Anywho, cheers!
I’m glad Matthew, that you’re reminding us in today’s DM, the sacred power of Divine Love within us, especially the ability to receive and give Forgiveness. Within our past ancestral and present lives we all need Forgiveness for ourselves and others in consciously healing these inner wounds on our evolving spiritual journeys with others. Our Source~Creator is merciful and compassionate with us and wants us to share this same Spirit of LOVE, Mercy, Forgiveness , and Compassion with one another since We’re All Part of God’s LOVING Diverse Wholeness~ONENESS in the Sacred Process of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT… COSMIC CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS….
Thank you for sharing this story, Matthew. The depths and bigness of the soul is indeed hard to imagine. Years ago, I imagined how God must feel about all the tragedies in the world, including the death of a child killed by violence, and I imagined God sitting in a corner of the universe, crying. I wrote a poem reflecting that image. Having written the poem, I didn’t feel it was enough to express my own grief; so I rewrote the image as a short play. Three years ago, during Covid, we did a Zoom reading of the play as our Good Friday “sermon” at the First Congregational Church of Prescott. It begins 8 minutes and 40 seconds into the service and can be watched here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo6gnQijeUE&t=135s